screen-for-OSX

A version of screen that supports vertical splitting (Shortcut key Ctrl+A |), ready for building on OSX (all Apple patches pre-applied)

Why use this version of screen?

1. Because the one installed by default on OSX is really old, and doesn't support vertical splitting
2. Vertical splitting is a killer feature that you desperately need
3. You're on a Mac by necessity or choice, and you want to use screen with vertical splits, but don't want to mess with installing the Apple patches required for building on OSX
4. Because building and installing your own software is cool

Installation

Note: This requires developer tools to be installed in order to build successfully

git clone https://github.com/FreedomBen/screen-for-OSX.git && cd screen-for-OSX && ./install.sh

The above command will download, build and install screen into /usr/local/bin/screen. This does not replace the default screen in /usr/bin/. Make sure to read the section on "Post installation" below.

Post installation

In order to run the new version of screen after it is installed (instead of the default old one), you will either need to reference it by full path (recommended) or rearrange your PATH variable so /usr/local/bin comes before /usr/bin so the new binary is found first (not recommend as it may have unintended side effects).

I recommend creating an alias in your ~/.bash_profile that simply points screen to the new version

echo 'alias screen="/usr/local/bin/screen"' >> ~/.bash_profile

If you don't care about the old version of screen, you can also replace it with the new binary:

sudo cp /usr/local/bin/screen /usr/bin/screen

Differences from real Screen

These are the things I did to this that make it vary from what you would get if you downloaded the official screen source code:

1. Applied all of the Apple patches for screen
2. Downloaded and included the required Apple header file vproc_priv.h into the repo so it matches the source here. Note: This file is not usually included because it's license is incompatible with the GPLv3. It's license is Apple Apache
3. Added an install script to make the build and install process easier